Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: reviewing community, potential reviewers, book reviewing, New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, National Book Critics Circle (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Woe betide the poor reviewer who must review a book on book reviewing, especially one that lashes out mercilessly at practitioners in the field. Pool, a longtime freelance reviewer and former Boston Review editor, asserts that editors too often select the wrong books and assign them to the wrong people. Reviewers in turn heap too much praise on these unworthy volumes; the reviewers are biased, unqualified, inaccurate and incompetent. (She illustrates this point with several examples of sadly laughable prose.) The pileup of criticisms is wearing, and Pool's suggested reforms, such as a reviewing code of ethics and having columnists in a variety of fields to make more knowledgeable selections of books to cover, are useful only to a point (e.g., even with a code of ethics, editors must rely on reviewers to reveal conflicts of interest). Pool is often spot-on, however, as when she opposes the reckless use of comparisons between books or authors rather than stressing what is unique about a work. Everyone in the field will applaud Pool's passionate insistence on the importance to literary culture of the serious, informed critique, which is increasingly endangered and in need of such vigorous support. (July 6)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Everyone in the field will applaud Pool's passionate insistence on the importance to literary culture of the serious, informed critique, which is increasingly endangered and in need of such vigorous support. -- Publishers Weekly, June 2007

Faint Praise is a thorough look at the current state of book reviewing in America...The examples are entertaining--and revealing...Our assessment: A-: solid overview and discussion. -- The Complete Review, July 2007

If you care about the fate of book reviews...Faint Praise is a book you should care about. -- Michael Merschel, book review editor, Dallas Morning News, August 2007

In the future, freshly appointed book editors at our daily newspapers should be handed a copy of Gail Pool's Faint Praise. -- Jerome Weeks, Critical Mass, National Book Critics Circle, July 2007

[Readers]...will quite likely never read reviews the same way in the future as they have in the past. -- Steve Weinberg, Hartford Courant, July 22, 2007 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: University of Missouri Press (June 29, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826217281
• ISBN-13: 978-0826217288
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #986,998 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America, August 28, 2007

By	E. Marcus (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book about a surprisingly complex subject manages to be both authoritative and highly entertaining. It is compelling reading for anyone who relies on book reviews and essential for anyone who writes with the hope of being published.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very highly recommended for both academic and community library Literary Studies collections, September 3, 2007

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

Informed and informative, "Faint Praise: The Plight Of Book Reviewing In America" by Gail Pool (a freelance journalist, reviewer, and review editor based in Cambridge, Massachusetts) is an impressively insightful, deftly written, accessibly articulate, expertly knowledgeable, and decidedly analytical survey of the multifaceted and complex world of book reviewing today. Getting a book reviewed can result in prestige for authors and their publishers, improved sales, and a raised public awareness of a particular title struggling for attention against thousands of competing books. They can also bury worthy and literate titles in a sea of inane and flawed books that are published by the tens of thousands every month. "Faint Press" provides a descriptive and comprehensive introduction to the institution of book reviewing, including such issues as why bad reviewing happens despite good intentions, why so many intelligent bibliophiles, knowledgeable readers, and gifted authors can fail at the art, craft, science, and business of writing book reviews. "Faint Praise" takes the reader behind the scenes and shows how books are chosen for review, the context in which book reviewing takes place, including a book review culture that is shows little interest in literature, a surprising antipathy toward criticism, and a vulnerability to the 'seduction of praise'. It's a sad fact of contemporary publishing that reviews so often degenerate into unmerited hype. Very highly recommended for both academic and community library Literary Studies collections, "Faint Praise" should be considered mandatory reading for anyone aspiring to become a book reviewer, and is especially valuable reading for authors, publishers, academicians, and the general reading public.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Keep reviewing, December 17, 2007

By	Dragana Djordjevic-Laky (Highland Park, IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Too bad the joke about reviewing a book about reviewing books is already taken, so those professional reviewers (at Publisher's Weekly, see above) really do have an edge over us amateurs. Gail Pool can thus rest assured that the market for her services, which she sees as endangered, will not be diluted to the point of total dilettantism, as I sensed from her slight animosity towards online reviewers who can afford to do it for free (I, in particular, take exception and offense to her statement that reviews spare in numbers are "probably" placed by the author's friends).

Aside from occasional pokes, however, it would be unfair to call Pool's plight a rant, since she does give good reasons for her concerns. It was about time someone who knows what they're doing spoke up about the caprices of the media machine that make and break careers, in this case inflationary, over-the-top, often misinformed book reviews, and, at the heart of it, the schemes that get an author reviewing space in the first place.

Fortunately, she does not leave it at that, but also offers viable guidelines and approaches that might very well serve the overall quality of literature, if not the book industry, which appears to be the underlying problem. Since, presumably, Pool is too experienced to bear any illusions that she is stronger than the system, the most valuable message of "Faint Praise" has universal appeal: be independent-minded if you can, do not take the path of least resistance by becoming just another particle of mass culture, and read, read, read--carefully.